By Josh Laurente | Executive Assistant
It’s been a busy summer here at Guåhan Sustainable Culture’s Food Resiliency Hub. From facilitating our cultural summer school program here for the first time, to hosting field trips for over two hundred students, to opening our first farm plots for local farmers - we’ve been hard at work turning the former Hamamoto Gardens into a space for cultural revitalization, youth education, and sustainable agriculture.
This summer at the Food Resiliency Hub, we launched the Lina’la’ Roots Club - our summer school program connecting middle school students to CHamoru history and culture through a curriculum focused on traditional farming, culinary heritage, and sustainable agriculture practices. With our newly renovated learning center, our Food Resiliency Hub offered the perfect place to offer such a unique cultural education program. Students gained skills from cultural practitioners in weaving, slinging, and talåya throwing, and they also learned about traditional crops like lemmai (breadfruit) and niyok (coconut), working together to create a recipe book of dishes they made throughout the program.
We also hosted many field trips and tours this summer. Chief Hurao Academy - a CHamoru language immersion school - had over 100 of their students tour our 17 acre fruit forest, learning about our native plants and fruiting trees. Also, as part of the 2025 Educators Symposium, we welcomed teachers from across the island, highlighting how our Food Resiliency Hub can support classroom learning with in-the-field education on sustainable agriculture.
Part of our vision for this place is making land plots available for local farmers. Given Guåhan’s ongoing history of land dispossession by the US military, access to farmland is a major issue local farmers face, and is a barrier towards stronger food security for our island. This summer we entered into partnership with Angel’s Garden, who now have a farm plot here where they’ll grow sunflowers and other ornamental plants. We’ve also partnered with our friends at Famagu’on Farmers to host their 2025 Fall Farmers Market here at the Food Resiliency Hub, creating space to celebrate and support our local farmers, small businesses, and our community.
It’s been an eventful summer indeed, and we are so excited and energized to continue cultivating a space for cultural revitalization, educating our youth, supporting sustainable agriculture, and protecting this land for future generations.
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